months of playing hare and hounds, Beulah was safe in Hampshire, or soon would be, and Phoebe—
'I'm going back to Philadelphia,' Meech concluded. He looked around, sniffed the night air, cast a speculative eye on the moon.
'You know, this Arizona Territory ain't a bad place! Someday, when they put me out to pasture, I might just take my savings and buy me a little shack in Tucson or Yuma. In Philadelphia the old bones aches during the winter, but out here I feel like I was forty again!'
'I thank you,' Jack murmured, 'for giving me her kerchief.'
Meech rose, flapped his coattails. 'Soon's my butt heals, I'll sell that ugly old mare to a glue factory and buy me a ticket home on the A. and P. I don't guess I'll be up to sitting for a week on the cars just yet.' He shook hands with Jack Drumm. 'You give me a lot of trouble, Mr. Drumm, but can we part friends?'
'We can,' Jack said.
The sergeant major brought him a blanket. 'Lieutenant Dunaway said you'd need this, Mr. Drumm.'
Wrapping himself in the coarse wool, Jack lay down next to the wall of the ruined adobe. The moon rose higher. Slanting shafts of yellow light shone through the blackened roof beams. He lay quietly for a long time, silk kerchief wadded in his hand. After a while he slept. He dreamed, inevitably, of Phoebe—of poor lost Phoebe, poor ravished Phoebe, poor—dead Phoebe Larkin.
At dawn he awoke, disturbed by a returning cavalry patrol. George Dunaway, wrapped in a blanket beside him, stirred sleepily and called to the fresh-faced young lieutenant. 'Find anything, Lucius?'
Lucius reined up and looked at them. 'Didn't expect to,' he grumbled. 'Nothing but a lot of hoof tracks where they ran all those horses up into the mountains.'
Propped on an elbow, Jack watched the young lieutenant clamber wearily from his mount and go into the tent to report.
'The Apaches eat horses, I know that,' he observed. 'With all that horsemeat, they may be a long time coming down.'
'I don't know,' Dunaway said. He sat up, wrapping his arms around his knees, and watched the dawn flush over the Mazatzals. 'Maybe they're getting second thoughts about horses. They're poor horsemen—a Sioux would laugh himself silly seeing an Apache trying to get on a horse—but don't ever underestimate Agustin's smarts. I wouldn't put it past him to be planning some kind of mounted attack along the river. An Apache can go on foot all day, that's true, but it takes a lot of time. With Agustin's people on horses, good horses, the Apache problem in the Territory can balloon into something that'll take the whole damned Army of the Potomac to settle!'
Eating from a tin mess kit, Jack stared down the deserted wagon road. The news of heavy raids along the Agua Fria had once again paralyzed commerce between Phoenix and Prescott. Agustin was still in the Mazatzals, watching the road from the lofty distance.
'Mr. Drumm!'
Startled, he turned. Uncle Roscoe beamed at him, whiskered face split in a grin. He pumped Jack Drumm's hand.
'They told me you come back! Lord, ain't I glad to see you! Sad circumstances, I guess—the young lady that was visiting you was took off by the Apaches, I hear—but it's an ill wind that blows nobody any good, or however they say it.'
'Any luck with the Gypsy Dancer Mine?' Jack asked.
The old man turned his burro loose to graze and squatted beside Jack in the shade of a smoke tree.
'I got her narrowed down,' he confided. He pointed to the wrinkled slopes of the mountains. 'See them twin peaks up there—kind of lookin' like a woman's tits? The Gypsy Dancer lays right between 'em, like a pendant around a female's neck. This time I didn't really go out for a long stay—just had me a few biscuits and a canteen of water —but when I go back up there—'
Something hit Jack Drumm hard.
'Listen,' he said. He gripped the old man's skinny forearm. 'Listen to me! How would you like to go up there right now?'
Uncle Roscoe's watery blue eyes blinked. He pulled away, saying plaintively, 'God damn it, you're busting my arm bone!'
'I'm sorry,' Jack apologized. 'I didn't mean to hurt you! But I want to make you a business proposition. You know the Mazatzals better than anyone, even Major Trimble and his cavalry.'
Uncle Roscoe bit off a chunk of tobacco. 'When them soldiers was running around in didies,' he confided, 'I was climbing those mountains. Why, didn't I never tell you? Me and Agustin was blood brothers! Onct I had me an Apache wife! It was back in—'
'Never mind!' Jack said. 'Not now, anyway! Do you think you could find Agustin's camp for me?'
Uncle Roscoe's jaws worked steadily.
'I'll give you five hundred dollars cash if you'll guide me into the Mazatzals and put me in the way of finding Agustin!'
The old man shook his head. 'You better wrap cold cloths around your head! I think you got sunstroke!'
'Never mind that! Will you do it?'
'The mountaintop is swarming with Apaches! They'll cut out your gizzard and pass it around for horsy- doovers!'
'Are you afraid?'
Uncle Roscoe swore, kicked the dust. 'Hell no—I ain't afraid! Them's my blood-brothers, and I don't take kindly to the way they been treated by the gov'mint! But Agustin ain't going to put no welcome mat out for
'That's neither here nor there,' Jack said. 'All I'm asking is whether you'll guide me up there!'
The old man rubbed his chin, chewed, spat. He looked at his burro, Pansy, grazing peacefully among the cavalry mounts.
'For a thousand dollars?' Jack prodded.
'God damn it, Mr. Drumm, it ain't the money! You took me in when I was sick, bled me, fed me, emptied my slop jar! I ain't never paid you back for that, and I guess there ain't any amount of money that'd settle my bill proper. But what in Tophet you aim to do onct you get up there?'
Jack took a deep breath. 'I don't know,' he confessed. 'But if Phoebe Larkin is alive, I will do whatever I can to rescue her. Maybe I can ransom her. Maybe I can—'
'Not to speak blunt,' the old man snorted, 'but you're a God damned fool, Mr. Drumm! You're askin' to be kilt, maybe roasted over a slow fire! You started up Rancho Terco here, along the river, in the middle of what's holy ground to Agustin and his people. You fit 'em right down to the ground, tooth and nail—scragged a few, too. When they catch you up there in Gu Nakya—'
'What's that?'
'Gu Nakya? That's where Agustin used to hole up in the old days. That's where some of his folks is buried, only they don't bury 'em, of course—they just burn down the brush hut the feller lived in. Gu Nakya is over the top of the mountain, looking down that steep drop to the other side.'
'Will you take me to Gu Nakya?'
Uncle Roscoe sighed. 'All right, if you're so damned anxious to lose your liver and lights! Soon's I pack up a few more supplies, I intended to head up that way anyhow. This time I got the Gypsy Dancer dead in my sights. But you sure you don't want to change your mind?'
'Dead sure! I am firm in my decision.'
Borrowing dried meat, hard cheese, and some tea and biscuits from the Sprankles, Jack told George Dunaway what he planned to do. Dunaway pushed back his hat and stared.
'You mean it?'
'I do indeed.'
'Only yesterday I was thinking 'What if Drumm went up there, tried to find Phoebe?' It was a wild hare of an idea—I said so at the time—but now—' Dunaway fumbled for Jack's hand, gripped it hard. 'Once,' he muttered, 'I beat the tar out of you in a fight. Remember?'
